Boards

I was discussing in another thread how incredible it was that the social services let Fritzl take care of the children regardless of him being convicted of one actual rape (as well as an attempted rape, and indecent exposure). According to an article in the Guardian, these kinds of records only stand for 15 years in Austria, before they are deleted. Thus the social workers didn't find any record of the incidents, despite supposedly searching for them.

yes. but obviously looking at them one would take into account that it was 'only' stealing and it was at the age of 16. of course if it was sexual assault or murder while you were 16, age doesn't come into it. so looking at past criminal records should be treated with sensitivity to the nature and circumstances of the crime.

If all conduct that "broke the law" (that's not just crimes!) was permanently held against people, life would be intolerable. Even for criminal offences it would be. Would you want that minor criminal damage conviction you got as a reckless teenager stopping you from getting a job in the future?

Like all these things, it's a balancing act. It is important to give some people second chances. But it's equally important to stop dangerous offenders from having the chance to commit awful crimes like this. Moral argument can draw no bright line. But there does have to be some element of each or society wouldn't be able to function.

This paragraph horrified me: "Perhaps the worst fears are for Elisabeth. She is said to be 'deeply distressed', agreeing to talk to doctors and detectives only on the promise that she will have no further contact with her father. At the age of only 42, her crudely cut hair is completely white, her lips are shrunken around toothless gums, her face is deeply lined, her body painfully thin, her skin almost transparent. According to a forensic psychiatrist, Dr Guntram Knecht, she has been 'destroyed by all means'. Of all those Fritzl damaged, she was the only one to know she was a victim. If she can live with her children again, 'it will be because of her desire to be a mother,' he said."
:(

And the problem the law has is that you can't just give massive discretion to administrators to exercise their expert judgement in every case. We need rules, and the general nature of rules means they can never fit every case correctly. Cases like this will always happen sometimes unless you take the extreme route of never deleting anything from anyone's record.

The odd thing about the Austrian system (as reported in the article) was that the same time limit seemed to apply to all kinds of convictions. There's every reason to keep some sexual offences on record for longer.